


at night your body is a symphony, and i’m conducting

by hoshi_ni_natte



Series: there is simply nothing worse than knowing how it ends [3]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:15:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29021073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoshi_ni_natte/pseuds/hoshi_ni_natte
Summary: “We’ve only ever just been good-for-nothing brats, Gintoki… I dare you to say I’m wrong.”
Relationships: Sakata Gintoki & Takasugi Shinsuke
Series: there is simply nothing worse than knowing how it ends [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2070330
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	at night your body is a symphony, and i’m conducting

**Author's Note:**

> will change summary/ add notes later im tired  
> set post ch680 and before they get back to edo. basically before The Final but yeeeeeeeeee

“Finally outgrown your fear of ghosts, haven’t you?” Takasugi’s low voice cuts through the air heavy with tension—poison, feels more like it—and he’s calmed and recomposed himself; not quite enough to quiet the unprecedented adrenaline-induced pounding in his chest, but just enough to fall into the familiar routine of baiting, because trespasser or not (definitely trespasser at the moment though), it’s exceedingly easy to drawl out the name of someone who knows him as well as he knows himself, maybe even better: _“Gintoki.”_

Gintoki is standing still, no sign that he’ll bite nor that he’s even thinking about it. Takasugi relaxed some when he registered that it was _just_ Gintoki, but regardless the guy’s clutching tightly onto the blade of his sword as if it’s the only way he can catch hold of him anymore, and his fingers, they’re trembling. Whether from enduring the fresh cut or something else, Takasugi can’t be bothered to find out, not when his heartbeat is slowing and his breathing comes to come in time with waves crashing against their boat. But his chest still feels tight, filling with the reek of sake emanating off of Gintoki with every inhale, and he decides with a loud exhale that this is all too silly _._

Takasugi lets go, leaving the weight of his sword to his un/invited guest, leaving Gintoki’s palm to weep blood and defy the rest of him, of them _both,_ that’s sworn to never shed even a single tear for who’s counting how much time now, sworn to forever curse storm clouds and all that they bring, if it’s torrents of filthy acid rain or the torment of every precious and painful memory they couldn’t wash away. Gintoki’s blood is a deep, dark red when it flows from the gash on the palm of his hand and paints a thick stripe down his wrist along the length of his forearm, collecting into a heavy globule at the sharpest edge of his elbow before dripping off and splattering hot right onto the skin on Takasugi’s chest.

Takasugi is mildly startled, has half a mind to be impressed. Not with the coincidence of the accuracy of it landing where his heart is (or should be, or _used to_ be), or from the sheer amount of skill it takes to stop an attack from him, because hasn’t Gintoki always been like that? Always been his match, made in hell on earth? In stubborn spite of all the bullshit they put the universe and each other and themselves through, always been _his?_

No, what impresses Takasugi more is himself, the fact that though he could never shake off superficial habits like wearing his yukata loose enough to expose his chest to the biting cold of the sea breeze at night and to the discomfiting warmth of Gintoki’s wounds, he could still instinctively move in self-defense from an intruder without sparing a thought or the time. He’s some convoluted kind of relieved that despite the vague, dreadful feeling that he’s losing himself more and more each day lurking in the deepest, darkest depths of him, he still has this much, at least _this much_ control over this body.

It’s twice as commendable because in defiance of his disgust in this world and all the distrust it’s bred in him, before Takasugi realized it he had abandoned the trained intuition required to watch his own back as he slept, because though fleeting he did have a fleet under his complete command that promised him and so consistently delivered the security of lethal shamisen wires and twin revolver bullets; while moths could stray in helpless attraction towards the flickering of his fucked up flame as it burned with desire for nothing but to raze the country to the ground, nothing could touch him, especially not pests, not even flies.

And it disgraces Takasugi, finds him reluctant to admit that it took him two years drifting on his own to relearn how to guard himself from the world he’s made an enemy of, if only because he can’t expire before it does, and if only because he’s constantly at the ready to stalk off as soon as he found what he was looking for, just before he further troubles those who still try to look up to him even when he’s long since set one foot in the grave, resigned his soul to an eternity in the pits of hell, when he’s clearly a dead man walking.

 _Dead man walking…_ That suits him pretty perfectly well, Takasugi supposes. That Gintoki is here without giving a flying fuck about that angers him initially. But after a stale sigh Gintoki declares _“You’re no ghost,”_ and in equal measure, it… allays him. Irrationally. He has no choice but to listen as Gintoki, unmoving still, drivels on: “Sorry to say, I’ve never made a hobby of ghost-hunting. If I could get paid for it, well, that’s another story.”

Takasugi could point out every single flaw in what Gintoki’s spewed out just now; it turns out they’d both spent the last two years drifting, working towards the same corroding goal from different places and chasing down the same specter, to salvage, or to destroy, or both, and so desperately that they would willingly give up the rest of their lives in search and in hollow hope, that they’d willingly given up their lives up until then along with all that they’ve held near and dear—that they’d parted with the only ones who had enough of them to make them waver, to become alone again— all to find each other _this way._ All that aside, even if he _hadn’t_ closed up shop with his odd jobs shtick, what would getting paid matter to Gintoki anyway? When nothing’s changed all this time, when all that he wishes to cherish still keeps slipping right through his fingers.

Takasugi, strangely, is in no mood to bicker anymore, so he settles for closing his eye. Without wasting the effort it would take to look up at Gintoki’s face and see what he can sense in his voice, something forlorn and crestfallen, he simply lets him carry on with his empty nonsense, “I doubt any amount of cash you shit out will make this worth it though, even if you compensated with the special sweets you ruined today…” Then Gintoki pauses, drops the sword for effect, but the clang of reforged metal hitting the wood of the floor doesn’t keep Takasugi from making out the shiver and strain in the following whisper of his name, the urgency in it, like to Gintoki it doesn’t come as easy, not now: _“ Takasugi…”_

He lets out his own stale sigh, because he can feel Gintoki staring at him and waiting, pleading for a response. He disappoints with a flat, toneless _“Yeah.”_ When he opens his eye, he catches sight of the pronounced downturn of Gintoki’s lips before he turns away to avoid his scrutiny, and it’s… childlike. _Childish._ A petulant, downcast expression Takasugi recognizes from when they were kids and could pass as cute and boyish, albeit barely, and on Gintoki’s adult face it just looks ugly, utterly. All the same it betrays emotions that Gintoki never wanted to give voice to—Back then, it expressed Gintoki’s unwillingness to lose to Takasugi; now it’s just his unwillingness to _lose_ him at all and altogether.

Gintoki freezes when Takasugi sits up and reaches a hand out towards him, wants to jerk away; they’d done some unplanned swimming earlier and couldn’t care enough to change out of those soiled clothes, so it’s a given that they would be damp and chilly, but more severely than his injury it would hurt Gintoki and devastatingly so, if they touched and he had to confront that Takasugi’s skin, on top of turning sallow, turned out to actually be cold, too, the cursed kind that has nothing to do with leisurely dips in the water and everything to do with one reality Gintoki isn’t prepared to face.

Takasugi elects not to say a word. He shrugs his haori off and uses the hem of his sleeve to wipe the blood, first off his chest, then off of Gintoki; he runs the pads of his fingers from his elbow up his arm to his wrist, slips easily into his palm, the uncharacteristic gentleness in Takasugi’s gesture and the dark cloth barrier between them inadvertently keeping Gintoki from direct contact with his mockery of a living body, and keeping Gintoki’s despair at bay for the time-being.

Gintoki catches Takasugi’s gaze and it pierces him, the moonlight from the port window tinting it gravely with the gaunt, gray bags under his eyes, and it hits Gintoki hard, has him completely catatonic. He ought to be thankful that Takasugi has enough flimsy mercy not to force him to sample the hilarious absence of his body heat, but instead Gintoki notices that the fabric of the haori is stiff in some places, more likely than not from dried blood Takasugi’s spat out during more coughing fits he didn’t stick around to try to stomach watching, when Takasugi dropped his kiseru and then later the conversation of how he turned out this way or why once he explained all that he had to.

When Takasugi pulls away, Gintoki finally moves, but not to entertain the flash of a fantasy he has of taking him by the wrist and taking him far, far away from everything so they can just start all over and be stupid kids again, free to go at each other’s necks and asses to their heart’s content over trivial things, free from the angst of a lost master and home— he only turns around and plops down on the edge of Takasugi’s make-shift ship bed without a single ounce of grace, doing his damnest not to get choked up over the un/fair reality that they each have only one life, and one chance to live differently. They’ve expended the latter doing who-knows-what on and off Earth after fighting those winless wars, while the former, well… Takasugi’s nearing—diving headfirst— into the end of his.

Watching Gintoki determinedly keep his eyes down, Takasugi is overcome with some strange urge to apologize, not sure for what exactly, not yet. But in the end nothing he’s ever done to really anyone has ever been forgivable, has it? It would be pointless, a waste of already thinning breath, and Gintoki especially couldn’t do anything with a sorry _sorry_ from him so he perishes the thought, smothers it to silence that heightens the sound of shuffling at his bedside. Gintoki is leaning down to pick up Takasugi’s sword to occupy himself, purposely getting the grip dirty because wounds never stop bleeding just like that, and they never stop hurting. Voice cracking, a half-whisper, he asks, “How far are we from Edo?”

All Takasugi hears is _‘How long do I have left with you?’_ He simpers, a crass, crude chuckle sounding from the back of his throat at the idea of Gintoki watching the sunset-tinged sea out at the bridge over bottles of sake he smuggled from the crew, turning this entire thing over in his head like it’s as impossible as turning the tides. “A couple more days,” he answers honestly, graciously. Then he raises a leg to kick Gintoki in misguided, misplaced playfulness, because up until recently Gintoki’s mouthed off so much about being the one to take his head, except now that it’s come to this he’s acting like a child who can’t accept a friend (and/or rival) moving away before they could settle the score. Takasugi has neither anything to say to try to console him nor any right to, even if he did. He settles for teasing, again: “And then after that you can go back to your old new life, yeah?”

Gintoki snaps his head in Takasugi’s direction, eyes wide and so fucking _sad,_ because he heard the unspoken _‘the one without me in it’_ loud and clear, too. Sure, Gintoki was Takasugi’s, to fight above all else, but conversely Takasugi was Gintoki’s to fight _for,_ and that sentiment has the confession spilling out of him clumsily: “I don’t know if I can do that.” Instantaneously an unmistakable, palpable guilt washes over him, slaps him harsh across the face; he’s well aware of what’s waiting for him back in Edo, _who,_ the _whole_ lot of them, and he’s well-aware that they’d all take him back without a moment’s hesitation. Gintoki just hates that even if there will be space for Takasugi in his _old new life_ —there always has been, if he just _came down_ —at this point, there’s no way he would last long enough to fill it, no way he’ll count among the thousands of things he treasures. Gintoki laughs pathetically, “…Didn’t you say I was only ever just playing house with my Yorozuya?”

“I was only ever just playing heroes with my Kiheitai,” Takasugi counters without missing a beat, lying back down and smiling, _grinning_ at Gintoki and the horror that puts in his eyes, the abject _harrowing,_ because it’s such a god-awful assertion to make just to stave off the impulse to argue that neither of those, not Gintoki’s Yorozuya and not Takasugi’s Kiheitai, has ever been just that, absolutely _never,_ not to either of them, notwithstanding how they ever acted about it, wreaking all sorts of havoc all over the place with their teams, their families. Takasugi shrugs a shoulder and levels him with the only thing that’s certain: “We’ve only ever just _been_ good-for-nothing brats, Gintoki…” Then he drops the smirk, scowls instead, scoffs. “I dare you to say I’m wrong.”

He isn’t, and Gintoki knows it. He _knows_ it and at that all at once the numbness sets in— that, or he’s lost just enough blood to lose sensation in his fingertips; either way it gives him a good-enough excuse not to be able to stop himself from putting the katana down along with his own bokuto, freeing a hand to reach out to touch Takasugi, to fear for his life—Takasugi’s, not his own, but if he’s being sincere it might as well be the same thing. Takasugi’s made up his mind a long time ago about destroying this rotten world, even if it meant rotting away with it and destroying himself, but somehow it’s never been as difficult to accept as it is at this very moment, a couple more _mere_ days away from their final arc together. Takasugi’s crossed over a plotline to a plane he can’t come back from and that’s all that it is to him; to him all that’s left is to do what he can with the meager time he bought himself. His fate’s been sealed and he’d sealed it himself, and Gintoki can drag him back from the depths of corruption and from the heights of crows, but no matter what he does, no matter how hard he tries, the one thing he can’t salvage Takasugi from is himself. So if nothing else, he can let himself have _this,_ if _anything,_ let himself revel in the war-drum beat of Takasugi’s heart through paper-white, paper-thin skin.

Takasugi knows better than to put a hand over Gintoki’s; he laughs in place of some poor attempt at comfort and understanding, the vibrating in his stained chest disturbing Gintoki’s reverie and slating him for misery by choosing him, him and no one else, to be the one to put him out of his. Honestly, Takasugi wonders how Gintoki would react if he says out loud right now that he’s fantasized, more frequently in the last two years than ever before, about Gintoki being the one to slay him. That he has no memory of ever believing in any god or any devil but the same way he gambled on Altana-charged blood and bone and ash, he’s been praying to whoever would listen to his undeserving spirit, for Gintoki to be un/lucky enough by pure providence to be the one to do him in for good when worse inevitably, ultimately comes to worst.

Gintoki retracts his hand and on its way back to him grabs the haori. He balls it into a fist, and finishes Takasugi’s half-assed job of stopping the bleeding by squeezing until his knuckles turn white, manifesting in this meek motion the strengthening of his resolve. He gets back on his feet and tosses the cloth aside after, lifting a knee to Takasugi’s bed and nudging at his hip to demand space, because if Takasugi’s talking about being brats then that’s exactly what Gintoki’s gonna give him. When he catches Takasugi’s gaze again, he keenly recognizes the shift in his expression, slight and subtle but nostalgic and _hurting_ at the childhood memory that the gesture brings rushing to the surface for both of them.

There was a time Takasugi squatted temporarily at a living space right by the school that welcomed him after he got thrown out by his household, a backroom Gintoki would creep into in the middle of one night to curb a restlessness borne from catching their teacher slaving away at new copies of his handwritten, hand-bound book. He had worked so meticulously, so _reverently,_ that Gintoki wasn’t sure what he even saw; the shadows cast on his countenance by lantern light and sheer focus and determination complimented an eerily ethereal glow, and it addled Gintoki’s mind with thought of not much else but a profound unease over how little he actually knew about him despite their time together, and, well, because he was a child, _ghosts._

Takasugi was a light sleeper then, and when Gintoki’s anxiety led him to his room he shot out of the futon in a panic, feeling around for something to grab in self-defense. He found nothing but tatami, of course, found only Gintoki sliding the door closed behind him with the same stupid, vacant look on his face, except he didn’t have any alcohol in him back then, didn’t look as awry or as worse for wear. Before Takasugi could question what he was doing Gintoki would clamber over as if trying to outrun the darkness of the night, would start sputtering excuses, about how Takasugi’s ex-pampered rich kid ass might not be used to chilly nights so he came to lend him some warmth, because if he got sick right after joining their numbers then they couldn’t go at it at the dojo the next day and it would be such a shame, you know?

Before any appreciation for Gintoki’s warmth kicked in, a defensiveness would overtake Takasugi and reignite his fight instinct, compel him to slip his unpleasantly cold feet up the other’s yukata and incite a wrestling match, wrangle Gintoki over whispers. He would call him out for his fake generosity—it was _so_ obvious he was scared out of his mind of something out there—and wouldn’t let him hear the end of it, because even if they weren’t at an age to still believe in ghosts and so fear them, _Gintoki_ was a demon child himself to begin with, so more than anything it was just plain _ridiculous._

They would stay up together for hours on end after that, making a competition out of picking each other apart until exhaustion took them over and put them to some of the best sleep they’ve had in their whole lives (granted, that was a few years, but still). Then they would wake up to the voice of their teacher calling them to class, the door sliding open and sunlight flooding in, then they would scramble apart and out of the blanket they’d somehow ended up sharing, race to the temple or the dojo or wherever just to play their silly little games all over again.

It’s begrudgingly that Takasugi comes back from that memory, makes peace with its irretrievability. But he finds Gintoki tugging at his blankets and shimmying under them with him—finds that he’d scooted back a considerable distance to make space for him, welcomed him into his bed _without_ a struggle. The difference between then and now, see, is that now they both understand what it was Gintoki saw back then, why he couldn’t get through the night without the distraction of his bittersweet company. Takasugi, specifically, has comprehended by transitive, transfused experience, the things that plagued their teacher, things he braved alone as he painstakingly wrote and bound those books with his human hands, made it so his teachings would outlast his transience while remaining sturdy enough to protect them when it mattered, vivid enough to guide them back together as they should be when they strayed just far enough apart.

And this is as together as they can get, truly, a picture straight out of their shortly shared childhood, just two brats so scared of losing to each other and losing each other to the dark to be claimed by beings not of this cursed era or planet or dimension, that they play games instead so they don’t lose their heads. Gintoki is laying on his side, back to Takasugi, but Takasugi can tell he isn’t trying to sleep or anything. He’s just staring out into nothing, putting all his energy into mustering a witty comeback or at least _another_ empty wisecrack, but he’s only half-sober and so fully vulnerable, bleeding out from more than the wound on his palm while Takasugi lies on his back as if the very end isn’t looming over them, staring them in the face. They lament it silently: somehow, games were so much simpler back then.

“Gintoki,” Takasugi lets out a long breath, and it sounds something like one of the prayers he’d otherwise keep under. He rolls over to face the opposite side and presses his back to Gintoki’s, readily accepting his warmth because his system can afford to give up his dignity for something it’s badly needed over the last two years, over the last decade, whatever— and swallowing when Gintoki jumps at the touch; looks like he didn’t grow out of his fear of ghosts after all.

Which isn’t unexpected and isn’t not fine, Takasugi would concede, because they didn’t outgrow playing their silly little games, either. This may very well be the last good sleep they’ll ever have together, the last _together_ they’ll ever have, but hey, they have tonight out at sea, each other bloodied and defenseless, and tomorrow. It’ll all make for a good last game of both house and heroes.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!!


End file.
